The 2018 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development reaffirmed the importance of multi-dimensional approaches to poverty eradication that go beyond economic deprivation. The 2018 MPI answers the call to better measure progress against Sustainable Development Goal 1 – to end poverty in all its forms; and opens a new window into how poverty - in all its dimensions – is changing.
With the 2018 estimates, the MPI measures acute multidimensional deprivations in 105 countries covering 77 percent of the global population.

2018 MPI estimates, by region (millions)

2018 MPI: dimensions, indicators, deprivation cutoffs, and weights

The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor.

Dimensions of Poverty

Indicator

Deprived if living in the household where…

Weight

Health

Nutrition

An adult under 70 years of age or a child is undernourished.

1/6

Child mortality

Any child has died in the family in the five-year period preceding the survey.

1/6

Education

Years of schooling

No household member aged 10 years or older has completed six years of schooling.

1/6

School attendance

Any school-aged child is not attending school up to the age at which he/she would complete class 8.

1/6

Standard of living

Cooking Fuel

The household cooks with dung, wood, charcoal or coal.

1/18

Sanitation

The household’s sanitation facility is not improved (according to SDG guidelines) or it is improved but shared with other households.

1/18

Drinking Water

The household does not have access to improved drinking water (according to SDG guidelines) or safe drinking water is at least a 30-minute walk from home, round trip.

1/18

Electricity

The household has no electricity.

1/18

Housing

Housing materials for at least one of roof, walls and floor are inadequate: the floor is of natural materials and/or the roof and/or walls are of natural or rudimentary materials.

1/18

Assets

The household does not own more than one of these assets: radio, TV, telephone, computer, animal cart, bicycle, motorbike or refrigerator, and does not own a car or truck.

1/18

The 2018 MPI methodology paper

Download the joint methodology paper, ‘The New Global MPI 2018: Aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals’ by Sabina Alkire (Director of OPHI) and Selim Jahan (Director of HDRO).

The original MPI was co-designed and launched in 2010 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report Office (HDRO) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at University of Oxford. It was first published in 2010 as part of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Human Development Report (HDR). The original MPI were aligned, insofar as was then possible, with indicators used to track the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The global MPI has been published in every HDR subsequently, with adjustments that have been documented in the methodological reports.

The advent of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, along with improvements in some survey questions to better reflect SDG indicators, provided an opportunity to revisit the global MPI and publish a revised version in 2018.

The improvements in the global MPI coincide with the start of the Third Decade on Poverty Reduction (2018–2027). They reflect inputs from a consultative process encompassing academics, UN agencies, national statistics offices, and civil society organizations. They build upon, insofar as data permit, the recommendations of the World Bank’s Atkinson Commission on Monitoring Global Poverty (World Bank 2017) that are concerned with non-monetary poverty measures. The empirical global MPI results launched in September 2018 reflect new estimations from every single dataset, following a consistent computational strategy.

Watch the recording of the 2018 MPI Global Launch (from 20 September 2018)